When retired Oregon State Police detective Larry Rupp watches news from Iraq, he is haunted by his experience in Vietnam. As part of an ongoing series, The Medford Mail-Tribune shares how the current conflict is affecting community members:

"Some are good memories of the late 1960s, back when he was a young soldier leading a platoon in the jungles and rice paddies in what was South Vietnam.

Others are painful reminders of dying friends, of bone-chilling fear, of killing to live.

"It's bothered me more since Iraq than it ever bothered me prior to that war," he says of post-traumatic stress disorder. "We weren't seeing the news on TV like my wife was seeing in the '60s. We were there.

"Now I'm seeing what my wife and other people saw in the '60s," he says. "When you start seeing real-life images of what's going on, seeing these soldiers put on litters, it's tough. It brings back old memories."

Nearly 20 percent of Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD, according to a 2006 study published in the journal Science. An anxiety disorder brought on by trauma, its symptoms include aggressiveness, alcohol and drug abuse, emotional numbness, irritability, nightmares, problems with employment and relationships, sleeplessness and violence. PTSD can start soon after a traumatic event or surface years later.

Rupp, 61, of Medford, a retired Oregon State Police detective, is a highly decorated Army infantry officer who survived battlefield wounds, both physical and psychological.

While the physical wounds were patched up by quick-reacting medics and military hospital personnel, the PTSD, reignited by news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan, proved more difficult to cure.

"I won't say everybody, but a lot of us who were there, if you saw any action, you had some problems to deal with," Rupp says.

His PTSD symptoms involved sleeping disorders and other issues.

"I had a little problem with some of the things I had to do because I was brought up in a Christian family," he explains. "I believed in the commandment 'thou shall not kill.' I believed in all that.

"It's kind of hard to put that stuff behind you, to put it in the back of your mind and say, all of a sudden, 'If I don't do him, he's going to do me,' " Rupp adds. "It's kind of hard to rationalize. The priest would say, 'God forgives you for this.' How can he say God forgives me when I've been told all my life it's not right?"